


time is all we pass through

by portions_forfox



Category: To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:10:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look who decided to grace us with her presence --  if it isn’t our big-shot writer from up North.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time is all we pass through

**Author's Note:**

> Porn Battle XIV. Prompt: wire.

Atticus used to sit right over there on that porch swing, used to rock slow next to Miss Maudie. Setting sun, blooming flowers, dirt road. They’re watching his children play in the street.  
  
 _I’m worried about Jem_ , he says to her, his arm wrapped around the back of that white wicker bench and his big feet propelling them back and forth, back and forth. His eyes are constant, black.  _I don’t know what he’s been up to lately._  
  
Maudie smiles, coils her lip.  _It’s not Jem you should be worried about_ , she answers.  _He’s just like his mother._  She crosses her arms and quirks her lips; her eyes dart to a different place.  
  
 _No, Mr. Atticus sir, it’s Jean Louise oughtta make you worried._  Shakes her head and smiles.  _She’s all you, she’s all you, she’s all you._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jean Louise comes home for the funeral.  
  
Calpurnia is stationed at the front steps when she walks up; old and stern and weathered, a great big sturdy oak tree in barren Maycomb County. Her dark hands are on her hips, her apron greasy. She sees Louise and smiles.  _Honey_ , she welcomes,  _My sweet little thing_ —meets her halfway down the steps and wraps her big strong arms around her neck … _who never was all that sweet_ . Louise closes her eyes, rests her chin on Cal’s shoulder.  _It’s good to see you, Cal. It really is._  
  
Inside Aunt Alexandra is in the kitchen, her fine-boned fingers whipping down a white lace tablecloth from a high-up shelf. She turns around—is much older than Louise remembers, lines on her face.  _Well look who decided to grace us with her presence_ , Auntie tuts.  _If it isn’t our big-shot writer from up North._  Louise hangs back a moment, not sure how to navigate this situation, more hesitant than the last time she was here, but then Auntie smiles soft and old and kind of sad and the tension is broken, snapped. She leans in.  _Come here_ , she sings,  _We’ve missed you._  
  
Uncle Jack slaps her on the back, lets his teeth show in a grin.  _Never could shape you into that southern belle Alex wanted_ , he observes, and Alexandra shoots him a sharp-eyed look—she is not to be nicknamed.  
  
Louise lets the chatter go on, the laughter bubble, the jokes be made, and then she cuts in at a lull in the talk,  _Where’s Jem at, d’you know?_  
  
Auntie’s lips tilt downward; just a slight alteration.  _He’s in the living room_ , she tells her, jerking her head.  _Go on._  
  
Jem is alone in their father’s chair, silently reading the newspaper. He looks up when she walks in, then back down.  
  
 _Jem_ , Louise laughs,  _aren’t you going to get up? It’s been three whole years since I been home._  
  
He glances up again. Back down.  _It’s been five_ , he says.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Louise left home for good— _for realsies_ , Dill would say—she was fifteen years old, and Jem was seventeen. She stood in that dirt road with dust kicking up around her ankles, settling into her just-washed white socks, her one leather suitcase in hand and a fancy white hat on her tangled hair, flat and brown and whipped around her face by the wind.  
  
Jem had handed her her suitcase and shook her hand, a little bit of a grin tugging at the corners of his lips.  _You be careful now out there_ , he’d said, mainly joking. He rocked back on his heels, his face dark tan from the months of hard labor over at the plant, out in the summer sun, and his hands callused as he scratched at his forehead. _I s’pose I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, bub. You ain’t so bad in the end._  
  
Louise cocked her head.  _You ain’t so bad yourself_ , she said, and her hair was whipped around her lips as she smiled at him.  
  
Jem went inside and Atticus came out, face set like stone, tender like the water. He gripped her shoulder with his hand and her knees stuttered. He let go.  
  
Louise bit her lip and looked up at him through pale blonde eyelashes, the brim of Maudie’s hat.  _Atticus, you think I should just stay here after all?_  the dust cutting at her ankles, wind slashing at her cheeks— _You think I should just stay?_  
  
But Atticus shook his head slow, heavy.  _No ma’am. You go out there and you do something_  big _, you understand?_  He waited till she nodded to keep talking.  _Do big things. You’re meant to._  
  
 _Why not Jem?_  she asked him.  _Why me?_  
  
Atticus looked at her, steady.  _Because you can, Louise._  
  
Jem said he hadn’t been listening.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
All through the funeral they’re forced to sit next to each other in the front pew, mumble a hymn, bow in prayer, listen as Father John rattles off a list of characteristics that don’t come damn near close to making up the whole that was Atticus Finch. Their shoulders brush and Jem stiffens. He scoots away from her.  
  
In the Hearse Jem stares out the tinted windows as the cracked-dry street rolls by. Auntie leans over, her knobby black knees jabbing, and whispers, _He’s just feeling a bit under the weather is all._  
  
Louise frowns, her brow knitted.  _Our father died, Alexandra._  
  
Auntie blinks.  _And there’s that._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
At the burial Jem won’t talk to her, and in the car Jem won’t talk to her, and at the wake Jem won’t talk to her. Stands in the corner near the window with a paper plate full of hors d’ oeuvres he isn’t eating, the sunlight setting over his head, his neck, his shoulders. His eyes are on the house across the street. According to Cal’s letters Miss Maudie died a couple years ago. Louise wasn’t here for that one.  
  
She weaves through the crowd, trying to avoid questions on New York and the newspaper column and the novel, trying to act like she’s been here all along, like she isn’t a foreigner at all. She reaches Jem at the window and they’re left alone—the power of the brother and sister in mourning.  
  
It’s nearly dark now. Somebody turned the light on over the porch, and the swing is rocking in the wind.  
  
 _You’re doing a real good job not talking to me_ , Louise commends him, conversational.  _Some real top-notch work, bub._  
  
He shrugs, unfazed.  _I’m not trying to._  
  
She tilts her head, both their eyes directed straight out the window.  _I’m twenty-six years old, Jem_ , she reminds him.  _I can tell when somebody’s ignoring me._  She pauses, shifting her flimsy paper plate from one hand to the other. It’s got a flowery design on it—something Auntie likes.  _If this is because I wasn’t around when he—_  
  
 _I had to work so hard for so long to be Atticus_ , Jem blurts out, his words soft but quick, tumbling over each other in his haste.  _And I never was. But you?_ He shakes his head, whistles out a breath, and still,  _still_  he won’t look at her—but she’s looking at him, the familiar curve of his hair across his forehead, his forward lips, the perch of the glasses he wears now atop his skinny nose. And the fading lights on the hollow bones of his long pale neck. He has always been taller than her.  _You didn’t even have to try._  He sighs.  _You were already him._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Half the family stays the night in the old house, footsteps creaking in the wooden hallways and woolen blankets on harsh floors. No one is quite ready to leave yet, each with their own memory of Atticus stored somewhere in the deep back corners of this house. Can’t just get up and move on with their lives like that.  
  
 _You and Jem will be sleeping in your old room_ , Auntie laughs.  _Just like old times. Just like when you were children._  But not like that, really. Not at all.  
  
Jem pulls off his boots with both hands, seated on the edge of the bed and unlacing in silence. Louise is from up North and unabashed; she undresses in front of him and bends down to her suitcase so the long pale line of her spine shoes, the laced-up black strap of her fancy new bra. They don’t have that down here in ’Bama, do they.  
  
She stands up, her back to him, and feels his eyes tracing her as she lifts her arms above her head, pulls on the oversized shirt she brought along. It isn’t very ladylike.  
  
She turns around and it’s a moment before Jem’s eyes flick up to her face. The windows are heavy with thick molasses darkness and the single light-bulb on in the overhead blinks feebly, the room awash in sickly yellow. They still haven’t spoken a word.  
  
And there is a moment, a true untouchable moment in time where the sky drags with night and the light flickers on over their heads and the wire on her new-fangled bra digs tender pink lines into the thin skin of her back, and Jean Louise looks up at her brother sitting there on the edge of his childhood bed with his heavy black boots at his feet and his heavy blue eyes rimmed with wear and discovers that the glasses perched up on his nose are their father’s, and she realizes,  _Atticus is dead._  Atticus is dead.  
  
Something must show on her face, because Jem lifts his gaze and reaches for her wrist and says,  _Don’t, Scout, don’t_ . And pulls her toward him. She stands between his open knees and clings to his shoulder while he peppers brother’s kisses on her neck and shoulder and cheek, and she says, _Nobody’s called me Scout in years._  
  
He pauses for a moment, his lips feather-light against her chin, and then without a breath or sound he shifts up and holds his lips against hers, the hand at the small of her back pressing her tighter to him. She opens her lips and his mouth slides into hers—they fall back on the bed, the childhood bed in which they spent so many nights pressed side-by-side, innocent brother, innocent sister, their common denominator a father so far from that. She lifts her arms and he pulls the shirt off, the hard calluses and scars on his wide palms brushing rush against the pale smoothness, fingers unhooking that New York City token and tossing it to the floor, where it is forgotten.  
  
Scout’s fingers wrench at the zipper on Jem’s jeans and he leans back, his hands on her waist straddling him, to allow her to undo it. Neither speaks. Neither wants to. This is not his first time, this is not hers, and she isn’t about to make any part of this tender.  
  
 _Scout_ , Jem starts to say, his voice hoarse and broken like his hands as she pulls him out of his jeans—a loud hitch of his breath— _do you_ —  
  
 _No, shut up, shut up_ , she whispers, hurried.  _Just fuck me._  
  
His hands guide her onto him and she sinks down, rides deep. They do not speak at all.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Afterward, the light overhead burns out and brother and sister are left in empty darkness. Scout’s breath is heavy, her skin laced with sweat; she leans over the bed to her suitcase, unzips an outer pocket and digs out a pack of cigarettes. Jem leans over his side and opens a window, a rush of cool air crashing in, goose-bumps rising on their legs and shoulders. The blanket rides around their waists. Their chests and arms are bare.  
  
Scout lights a cigarette and drags, her fingers shaking. She passes it to Jem. Smoke coils around their heads and pools in wisps at the ceiling. In the shadows Jem looks older, the creases in his forehead and around his lips more obvious, the set of his brow more defined. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s Jem, that he’s her brother, that she just— He hasn’t changed. She has. That’s what it all comes down to; the sister ran away and the brother got stuck. There is no end to the story.  
  
Jem breaks the silence with a flood of calm hushed words.  _I still remember the names of every single Robinson kid_ , he says, threads of smoke tailing the ends of his words:  _Do you?_


End file.
